I'll take the WD Raptor, unless you give me a 240 GB SSD

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Western Digital today announced it is now shipping the new WD VelociRaptor 1 TB hard drive, the latest addition to its award-winning drive family, the largest capacity 10,000 RPM hard drive on the market today. Designed for high-performance PCs, Mac computers and professional workstations that require a balance of high performance and capacity, the WD VelociRaptor drive is a favorite among enthusiasts and creative professionals. The WD VelociRaptor will also come in capacities of 500 GB and 250 GB.

Leveraging enterprise-class mechanics to provide 24x7 durability under high-performance workloads, the new WD VelociRaptor 1 TB hard drive is geared for creative professionals who demand the ultimate SATA drive. Creative pros use write-intensive applications that manage large, dynamic files; for example, video editing and digital content creation and management, which ultimately put a strain on storage devices that utilize write-challenged NAND memory for performance enhancement. WD VelociRaptor's outstanding read and write performance across the entire disk capacity makes it a perfect match for the creative professional and enthusiast who want to optimize their tools, enhance productivity, and increase storage space at the same time.

"WD is committed to providing customers with the best performing and most reliable SATA hard drives and our WD VelociRaptor family of drives underscores that promise," said Darwin Kauffman, vice president and general manager of WD's enterprise storage. "With ever-increasing demand for greater capacity, the new 1 TB WD VelociRaptor drive delivers the ultimate combination of speed and storage for the power user."

The WD VelociRaptor 2.5-inch hard drive comes in the IcePack enclosure, a 3.5-inch mounting frame with built-in heat sink - a factory customization that fits the drive into a standard 3.5-inch system bay and keeps the powerful drive extra cool when installed in a high-performance desktop or workstation system.

Rock-solid reliability - Designed and manufactured to workstation standards to deliver stellar reliability in high workload environments.

Ultra-cool operation - Consumes less idle power and uses similar active power as the previous generation WD VelociRaptor while offering greater capacity and performance.

Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) - Optimizes operation and performance when the drives are used in vibration-prone, multi-drive chassis.

NoTouch ramp load technology - The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection when in transit.

Environmentally conscious - In addition to being RoHS-compliant, this generation of WD VelociRaptor is also a halogen-free design.

Price and Availability

WD VelociRaptor hard drives are available now at select distributors, resellers and e-tailers, and come with a five-year limited warranty. Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) for the WD VelociRaptor 1 TB (model #: WD1000DHTZ) is $319.99 USD, the 500 GB version (model #: WD5000HHTZ) is $209.99 USD and the 250 GB version (model #: WD2500HHTZ) is $159.99 USD. More information about WD VelociRaptor hard drives including terms of the limited warranty may be found on the company website at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=20.

Cool... but you could get a decent 1 TB hard drive (~$100) + up to a 240 GB SSD (if you get a good sale price on a 200-250 gig model) for very close to the same price as the 1 TB velociraptor, and you'd get much better performance + slightly more storage.

The part of me that still loves my 8 year old 74 gig WD Raptor that's still going strong loves this new model, but system builder in me says that SSDs make Raptors obsolete.

Senior Monkey Moderator

There is a review up an Anand's that shows this drive to be a great performer (when compared to other mechanical drives).
I wonder, though, if a pair of good less expensive 1TB drives in RAID0 would give you the same performance. The cost of a pair could be less than a single VR.

There is a review up an Anand's that shows this drive to be a great performer (when compared to other mechanical drives).
I wonder, though, if a pair of good less expensive 1TB drives in RAID0 would give you the same performance. The cost of a pair could be less than a single VR.

Are you really sure about that?
Because I know that if the head touches the plate the area is damaged, that's the reason why a HDD can die (or it gets massive damage) if the power is lost during it's operation.

@repman : Yes, they used to have a "parking track" on the platter where no data was written to drop the heads on.
Didn't do wonders for the life span of the r/w heads though.
After that, they made the actuator arms retract off the platters and added power loss curcuitry so that the heads would retract instantly if a power loss was detected before the heads could touch down and cause disaster.
Sounds to me like WD is just stating common tech as a feature, unless they are doing something completely new in that regard.

There is a review up an Anand's that shows this drive to be a great performer (when compared to other mechanical drives).
I wonder, though, if a pair of good less expensive 1TB drives in RAID0 would give you the same performance. The cost of a pair could be less than a single VR.

1TB Velociraptor. Now we're talking. I have its older and bigger brother Caviar Black 2TB and man this thing is fast. And big in capacity. Sticking 2 1TB Velociraptors in RAID makes a lot of sense now.
Below the 1TB, they just weren't that interesting.

Velociraptors have 2 BIG advantages: They are top HDD technology, having the biggest reliability of ALL consumer storage media; some user have those for almost 10 years and still kicking. The other ones is that, compared to SSD, it will NOT diminish its performance over time...

These HDD's are still in a weird limbo in my opinion. On one hand there not as fast as an SSD but faster then a 7200RPM drive (duh!), they have more storage for the price then an SSD but again not as much as a spindle drive. I can honestly not think of a placement for these! Yes there reliable I have a 74GB in the old machine in my bedroom and its like 8 years old! And yes you have increase in performance (over other "reliable" spindle drives) but the only play I could see this coming in is large sequential reads like when ya boot windows or you have to load a game etc, but even that has its fault RAHH!

These HDD's are still in a weird limbo in my opinion. On one hand there not as fast as an SSD but faster then a 7200RPM drive (duh!), they have more storage for the price then an SSD but again not as much as a spindle drive. I can honestly not think of a placement for these! Yes there reliable I have a 74GB in the old machine in my bedroom and its like 8 years old! And yes you have increase in performance (over other "reliable" spindle drives) but the only play I could see this coming in is large sequential reads like when ya boot windows or you have to load a game etc, but even that has its fault RAHH!

if you check techreports review. the read speed of the velociraptor is actually as fast as an SSDs, which is quite amazing seeing as hard drives are seen as one of the things most likely to bottleneck a system.